Amazon orders not importing

Tradebox Finance Manager integrates with Amazon by reading orders from the reports that Amazon generates. The Amazon Order Report needs to be downloaded into a folder on the user's PC or network first. The creation and downloading of the file should be done automatically by Tradebox if the user creates and enters their Amazon Marketplace Web Services (MWS) details into the connection. See Setting up MWS. Manual report requests can also be used by some users but will cause problems for others, click here for details.

Once an Amazon Order Report has been placed into the local Amazon IN folder (either manually or by the Tradebox Scheduler) it can be imported by Tradebox and passed to Sage. This can be done on demand by selecting the Download option from the Operations menu. Alternatively, Tradebox can be configured to routinely interrogate the Amazon IN folder by selecting the Settings option in the Configuration menu.

Troubleshooting automatic report requests

If you’ve got Tradebox set to use your MWS credentials to automatically request the reports from Amazon, this request is the first potential point if failure and it’s not uncommon to have occasional problems due to the way Amazon throttle report requests.

You can easily tell if the problem is due to automated report requests failing by checking the IN folder for the Amazon channel(s).

To find your IN folder, go to Sales Channels under the Information header. Open the Amazon channel by double-clicking. You’ll see the INPUT folder in the middle of the sales channel details, use the Open button to open this in File Explorer.

Tradebox reads reports from the IN folder, and once it has actioned a report successfully or unsuccessfully, it will automatically move the report to the OUT folder.

If there are reports in your IN folder, the automatic report request is not the problem and you should proceed to the section ‘Troubleshooting Tradebox importing orders from the reports’.

If you have anything other than Amazon order reports in your IN folder, get rid of it. The folders should only be used for Tradebox to read the order reports and you will experience issues if other files or folders are stored here.

If your IN folder is empty, Tradebox may be having problems in requesting the reports. Open your Tradebox Amazon Download Scheduler(this sits in your Windows System Tray, near the date & time of your PC – you may need to click the ‘show hidden icons’ up arrow) by right-clicking the icon and choosing Open Scheduler.

Note - the Scheduler should always be running if you've entered MWS credentials in your Amazon sales channels. If it's not, completely close down the main Tradebox Finanace Manager application, then reopen it. The scheduler should launch alongside the main application.

The scheduler will display a log of report requests – remember this application’s sole concern is to use your MWS credentials to request order reports from Amazon – and will indicate whether requests are successful or not. You may need to scroll down to view the most recent requests.

Index Out of Range

A common error in the scheduler is the ‘index out of range’ message

The Amazon order report download for report [report id] failed for the following reason: Index was out of range.

This is an effect of the way in which Amazon throttles report requests by assigning each request an ID; go too long without running Tradebox, overwhelm the service by requesting too many reports manually or by clicking ‘process now’ too often, or move your Tradebox data from one PC to another and you’re likely to run into this issue. To resolve:

Go to Sales Channels under the Information header. Open the Amazon channel by double-clicking. Use the Resetbutton in the sales channel details screen to reset the last report ID requested. Click Save & Close on the channel.

If you have multiple Amazon sales channels, repeat this step on any channels that may be having problems. If you’re not sure which channels specifically are having the issue, you’ll do no harm by resetting the last report ID on every Amazon channel in turn.

Re-open the Tradebox Amazon Download Scheduler. Click Process Now.

The scheduler will show whether the request was successful – again you may need to scroll down to see the most recent message.

If it shows ‘Index out of range’ again: repeat from step 1. This may take several attempts but will eventually resolve the issue.

If it shows ‘report request successful: next request at [time]: check your IN folder for a report. If one is present, use the Download button in Tradebox’s Operationsmenu to get Tradebox to read the report. If no report appears in your IN folder, a report is not ready for you yet from Amazon and you should re-check the IN folder and the Scheduler at the time specified in your scheduler.

MWS/AWS credentials errors

If your Scheduler returns an error referencing MWS credentials, this indicates that yours have either not been entered, have been entered incorrectly, or have not been activated by Amazon. Follow the steps in Setting up MWS to make sure these are correct in each Amazon sales channel.

If your Scheduler returns an error referencing the AWS auth token, this refers to our developer token which is held on a section of our website. Check you can access http://www.tradebox.uk.com – if we’re having technical problems or your computer’s firewall/security settings are denying access to that site, the Scheduler will not be able to complete a report request until this is resolved.

Manual report requests

When Tradebox reads the Amazon Order Report it looks for the Amazon marketplace which is recorded against each order in the file, i.e. Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE etc. When an Amazon connection is established in Tradebox, the user needs to specify which Amazon marketplace the connection is for. Tradebox will only import sales from the Amazon Order Report that matches the marketplace the connection was set up for. If the Amazon Order Report is requested manually it is essential that the user ticks the “Include Sales Channel Column” box on the Amazon Order Reports screen.

Troubleshooting Tradebox importing orders from the reports

Following a download attempt, the Operations Log details how many transactions are imported and how many invoices have been created in Sage. It will also alert the user in bold red letters if there were any errors during the download. If there were errors, use the Error Log tab at the top of the screen to find the nature of the problem. Scroll to the bottom of the error log to view the most recent information – check the timestamp as only errors specific to the most recent download are relevant, older entries will repeat the same error on each download attempt until the problem is resolved.

If the Amazon Order Report is open in another program, or that file has ever been opened in Microsoft Excel, Tradebox will be unable to read it.

Ensure no other files or folders appear in the Amazon IN folder other than Amazon Order Reports.

If the error log returns mapping errors (e.g. ‘unable to find customer mapping for account x’, ‘unable to find bank account x for the payment method y’, ‘unable to find product record x’) this means that Tradebox has read the orders from the Amazon report but been unable to post them to Sage. You simply need to configure the relevant mapping, a link to our support article for the specific problem will be included in the error log, follow the steps we’ve provided.